Adam Arkin has had cool and interesting career in both film and television. After playing one of our favorite characters, the off-beat mountain dweller Adam, from the popular '90s series Northern Exposure, Arkin went on to land other roles in the Chicago Hope, The West Wing, Monk, Life, and more. Although Adam has spent much of the last few years on the small-screen, he's recently stepped away from television to appear in the hilariously crazy short form viral series The Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show on the newly formed C-Spot multiplatform comedy channel.

Since we loved Arkin's off-beat character in Northern Exposure, we had no idea he had a similar sense of humor that crosses over to real life. It's a good thing because The Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show is even more oddly bizarre and off-beat than anything Adam (the character) ever encountered in the fictional town of Sicily, Alaska.

Debuting on Friday, April 25 on C-Spot, Adam takes a few questions from Tiny Chicken's Japanese host, Kiko, and lives to tell about it. Luckily, we caught up with Arkin just in time to find out what the hell The Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show is all about. If you haven't seen any of the earlier or latest episodes, be sure to bookmark the new C-Spot channel on Youtube for Adam's Friday appearance. It's crazy, but virally cool.

THE DEADBOLT: So, do you think your character, Adam, from Northern Exposure would have been into a show like this?

ADAM ARKIN: I think that it would be one of his favorite shows. Adam always had a penchant for the surreal.

THE DEADBOLT: Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine has been described as Letterman meets Pee-Wee Herman, Emeril, and a Japanese schoolgirl on meth. How would you describe it?

ARKIN: I think that pretty much covers it. I feel like Kim Evey has managed to create a really kind of unique absurd character and a kind of an absurd universe that goes along with her.

THE DEADBOLT: Is this the weirdest thing you’ve been involved with?

ARKIN: No. You know, I started out doing improvisational comedy with a group in New York and I’ve always had a kind of appreciation for absurdist humor. My career has been peppered with opportunities to do things that were a little strange and a little off the beaten path. But this is right up there for sure. You mentioned Adam in Northern Exposure. I wouldn’t say that Northern Exposure in general was as out there as this, but the character was pretty extreme. I’ve always enjoyed flexing my muscle when it comes to this kind of comedy.

THE DEADBOLT: After checking out the Unicow episode, I'm trying to figure out you're fitting into the show?

ARKIN: Well, I don’t want to give too much away. But I come on as a guest and, like any of the guests, I’m immediately confused by exactly what it is that’s being required of me. In my case, I play a character named Brad Small who is a mycologist - a man who studies mushrooms and other forms of fungus.

THE DEADBOLT: Does Kiko pronounce your name wrong?

ARKIN: Yes, she does. She calls me Bad Smell.

THE DEADBOLT: How did you get involved with the show?

ARKIN: I did a movie with Kim’s husband, Greg Benson, who’s also one of the producers of Gorgeous Tiny Chicken and directed the episode. We just really hit it off. We were working on a film called Graduation, an independent film that is actually just about to be released. We were shooting in Pittsburg on location and both of us had roles that gave us a lot of spare time. So we bonded and he ended up showing me a lot of his short film work. He’s got a website called Mediocre Films and he produces these wonderfully fun, out-there comedy shorts. And I was really intrigued, not only with the quality, but the fact that he seemed to be carving out this amazing niche for himself using the new technology that places like YouTube and these various sites allow. I just told him, "Look, I’d love to be involved." The first thing I got to do with the Greg and Kim family was a Mediocre film called Swapping Heads. I had a great time and I was also amazed because one of Greg’s films , a piece called Greg Hits Hollywood, in which, for the most part, he’s interviewing real people outside of Grauman’s Chinese Theater and at some point during the interview just hitting them on the head with his microphone. And in the mix of all of these real people was a woman, this Japanese tourist, who he starts a conversation with and keeps hitting. And she finally says to him, "You’re not very good at your job are you?" Now I had gotten to know Greg and Kim and become friendly with them, and had known them months before I realized in showing the film to a friend of mine, that the Japanese tourist in question was in fact Kim. I was just blown away at how completely convincing she was because Kim is completely Americanized. I had known her for months before I realized they were one and the same person.

THE DEADBOLT: What are your thoughts on how digital media is taking over and transforming various mediums?

ARKIN: I think it’s fantastic. What it’s allowed - and I don’t consider myself an expert on new media, but I’ve become addicted to YouTube and surfing the net for what’s out there and what people are doing. To me it’s just opened the floodgates for ideas. The technology allows anybody with an imagination and a small budget to be inventive and get stuff out that gets an audience and circumvent the kind of corporate bureaucracy that can squelch so many good ideas before they even have a chance to find the light.

THE DEADBOLT: I know that Gorgeous Tiny Chicken sort of got off of the ground with David Spade’s help. Do you surf the web looking for these types of things?

ARKIN: I don’t surf the web looking for projects to get involved with if that’s what you mean. But I do surf the web to kind of sample what people are doing. I’m sure there are studies on how people surf the web and I’m sure I fit into a very common category of people. What I find myself doing is a kind of - it almost becomes sort of like a scavenger hunt. If I find something that I find intriguing, it will lead me very often to half a dozen other sites that have similar or equally interesting pieces of film. I just see where that ends up taking me. Sometimes it leads into some blind alleys that I have to get out of rather quickly, but very often it leads me to really cool surprises and sometimes also even historical stuff that’s really interesting to me. At one point I was fishing around and found an old kinescope of an advertisement that incorporated the cast of some the original Second City people, including my father. It was like for a shoeshine product that had my dad and a couple of other Second City cast members in it. And there was just no way to ever anticipate finding that. It’s like you have access to every archivists’ closet and file drawers right in your office.

THE DEADBOLT: Is there any chance of you coming back to do another episode?

ARKIN: Another episode of Gorgeous Tiny Chicken? I would certainly be open to it. We haven’t talked about my returning but I have no doubt the show will be successful. So there might be an opportunity to reincarnate as another character or just come back as the mushroom expert.

THE DEADBOLT: So have you started on The Trial of the Chicago 7?

ARKIN: That was a rumor, a really rampant rumor that is not indicative of anything I know that is set in stone. My understanding is that it started because of a Vanity Fair reporter who had access to Steven Spielberg’s office. And was left alone for a moment and took the liberty to kind of make note of stuff that he saw in the office. Part of what he saw in the office was a group of head shots and a list of casting ideas and my understanding is that my name was on that list as a possible idea. Now, on the basis of that, that story got leaked even before it made it to publication and the next thing you knew everybody was referencing this list that included Will Smith and a number of other, much bigger, stars than me. It was very good company to be in, but unfortunately it’s still only a rumor. I, of course, had my manager call Spielberg’s casting people as quickly as I could to find out how much weight any of it had. They would only confirm that I was in fact on a list, but it was way premature for anybody to be announcing a cast.

THE DEADBOLT: It sounds like a great project. How do you feel about your name being attached and would you be up for it?

ARKIN: Hey, I would give my right arm to be involved with it. But right now you’re guess is as good as mine.